


Our Steeled Souls

by Wecanhaveallthree



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:22:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26457862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wecanhaveallthree/pseuds/Wecanhaveallthree
Summary: The Iron Hands have long battled their internal passions, counting them among the deadliest foes the Chapter has faced. What place is there in this brotherhood of steel for a Judicar, a warrior sworn to guard the souls of his brothers? Souls that, they insist, are a weakness? Against the backdrop of an assault on another race who gave away their spirit for the safety of ever-living metal, Judicar Kell must find his own truth.
Kudos: 7





	Our Steeled Souls

Judicar Kell’s helm contorted grotesquely, the ceremonial skull-plate warping as green light overwhelmed the sensors. For a moment he was blind, his skin prickling painfully where hot ceramite pressed. Where metal met augmetics, there was no feeling at all. Kell did not pause to wrestle with his wargear. He did not slow, nor did his measured pace increase. Though his optics were shorted, the awareness of the battle-brothers at his side remained. He walked on.

That was how wars were won. From the time of the phalanx on ancient Terran battlefields. To the march of god-machines on worlds at the galaxy’s edge. To the grim darkness of the far future - and beyond.

Step by step.

The roar of bolters entwined with the sinister hiss of gauss flayers. Neither the advancing strike force of Iron Hands nor the Necron warrior-constructs guarding Objective Kappa-Mu-Eighteen were hurried as they engaged. Machine-spirits in Imperial weapons and armour fed target data to their transhuman wielders, warring against the implacable xenos. Rather than a clash of spirit and skill, the engagement resembled a tactical simulation between opposing cogitators rather than rival civilisations.

Where did that put a man who was sworn to safeguard the souls of his fellows? Was there room in the hard calculus of war for that consideration? The Primarch had believed so. And though the Iron Hands had spent ten thousand years shriving themselves of all they considered weakness, their souls had remained.

That was, perhaps, the only difference between the two forces. But it was a crucial one. Static crackled across Kell’s vision and a deep thrum shuddered through his wargear as power rerouted around damaged pathways. In a moment, he had a hazy, washed-out picture of the battlefield, as though seeing through a thick fog. A moment beyond that, proper threat-assessment data and fire matrices, added and sequenced within the strike team’s collective.

‘Are you hit, Judicar?’ came the flat voice of Sergeant Maun over the vox. ‘Combat inload was reduced.’

‘A glancing blow,’ Kell replied, using his own voice rather than a binaric shunt or acknowledgement rune to prove it. ‘Blisters at worst.’

‘The flesh is weak.’ A note of disapproval. Maun was Firstborn - heavily augmented, long-indoctrinated in Medusa’s creed, and a survivor of Clan Borggos’ purges. ‘Your recovery time is beyond acceptable parameters. Remember your duty.’

Though the chastisement was deserved, it stung. Weakness was abhorrent on harsh Medusa, was rightfully mocked by all among the Iron Hands. A Judicar embodied that disdain for mortal trivialities such as pain or mortal wounds. Kell’s position demanded that he stood at the forefront of every attack, to disdain the weapons of their foes and inspire his brothers by example. To deliver contemptuous death to the greatest of enemies, to strike down their champions and spark fear in their hearts.

For a moment, Kell saw himself through the veteran Sergeant’s eyes. The heavy robes over menacing black armour, the single white hand of their Chapter emblazoned on one pauldron. The mangled faceplate. The burning embers of shattered helm-lenses. A vision of strength outside - but hesitant within. In step, but not ahead. One of many. A cog. Replaceable.

‘When the mind hesitates, overcome it,’ Maun growled, his bolter roaring, Necron Warriors collapsing as mass-reactives shattered their skeletal forms. ‘When the body fails, replace it.’

His meaning was obvious, his recitation of the Iron Creed perfect.

But there was a reason Kell wore the black and Maun did not.

‘Only the spirit is pure,’ the Judicar replied and broke step with his battle-brothers, executioner’s blade snarling from its sheath. The thick, flat-headed sword should have been wielded in a twin grip, by rights, but the bionic augmentation that was every Iron Hand’s birthright enabled the Judicar to leave his other arm free. Chained to it was the mystic tempormortis, an arcane device wrought in the shape of an hourglass that stole time itself from any who dared confront the wielder in close combat.

As expected, several xenos swung their heavy gauss flayers towards the Judicar, responding to ancient combat protocols. A target of opportunity dictated their attention. In doing so, their relentless barrage faltered for a moment, a second, the merest tick of the chrono. No cogitation was instant.

The Iron Hands made them pay for that inefficiency with precision fire.

Kell watched the Necron warriors’ formation waver, a rippling of indecision as significant holes appeared in their ranks. Engrammic errors were further compounded by increasing complexity, ceaselessly updated as more constructs fell. A hot surge of pride gripped his machine-clad hearts, a searing warmth that pumped through his enhanced system like combat-stims. He could see his own twisted visage reflected countless times in the coruscating necrodermis bodies before him. The eerily humanoid skulls turned towards him, their empty sockets tracking his approach, exposed vertebrae clicking, rotating, bringing their alien weapons to bear.

Slowly. Too slowly. The Judicar was inside their firing arc, close enough that the arcane grip of the tempormortis seized them. Zone Mortalis. The place where all calculations converged in victory.

There was no activation stud. No trigger to set chainblades a-whirl. The executioner blade was a relic of finer ages, forged with all the skill and steel-lore that Medusan artificers possessed. For millennia the art of making such weapons had been forgotten, buried with Ferrus beneath the bloodied sands of Isstvan. It had returned with the Primaris. It had been entrusted to their hands.

Kell pivoted as he swung the sword, a one-handed arc that cleaved through four Necron constructs. Few edges were sharper than those forged on Medusa. Alien metal parted. Cabling and viscous liquids spilt out along with a musty, crypt-stale exhalation of air. He could not help but think of it as a last breath, held in for countless aeons, now freed.

For a moment he stood alone amongst the dead-eyed constructs. A moment that was the space between the twin beat of his hearts. The fire-line had scored dozens of kills as it advanced. But it was his blade that struck first. His black boots already stepping up and over the twitching xeno corpses.

Remember your duty.

Pride had been Manus’ undoing. It had been pricked, wounded, tarnished by association. It had flogged the Primarch forward, running beyond his supply lines and tactical briefings to be the first to strike against the new-made Traitors. Had the great Father felt as Kell did now? Righteous? Invincible? Ready to prove himself finally, irrevocably loyal?

And how had Ferrus felt with his beloved brother’s sword at his neck, alone amidst enemies, knowing that pride had sealed his fate?

Servos groaned and gears crunched as Kell checked his momentum hard, setting his feet in a wide stance. He brought the executioner’s blade across in a back-handed slash that sent a leering necrodermis skull flying. Nothing entered that circle guarded by steel. The Judicar hewed grasping limbs and charging weapons, but even transhuman reflexes could not guard against every angle, and for that moment he was alone.

Then he was not.

The Iron Hands crashed into the staggered Necron line like a great beast of ceramite. They struck as one. Heavy bolters spat at point-blank range. Power axes carved through unliving flesh. Mechadendrites whirled, displaying a fiendish array of saws and ripper-weapons. A mortal opponent would have broken, but the Necron warriors lacked even the most basic of self-preservation instincts. Something deeper in the complex did not - a paltry few chassis flickered and vanished, stolen away by alien technology for repair - but the vast majority remained where they fell.

Maun clanked to the Judicar’s side. The Sergeant’s bulk was further filled out by heavy augmetics and additions to his Firstborn plate, thickening the already-sturdy armour to near-Terminator proportions. A lesser Marine would have groaned under the weight, but the Sergeant was more bionic than flesh, more kin to a power loader than a human being.

He flattened a downed warrior chassis underfoot as he came to rest. ‘An illogical defence,’ the vox hissed with Maun’s voice. ‘The xenos cannot recover and repair per usual strategy. To deploy them on this neutral ground rather than their lair is wasteful.’

Kell nodded in response. Few Iron Hands bothered with body language and rarely acknowledged it from others. ‘Agreed. It indicates a larger garrison than we anticipated.’

‘Or desperation.’

‘A pointless diversion, Sergeant. They know well that the Imperium is drawn on by these skirmishes.’

‘Their leadership may be irrational. It is precedented.’

Ignoring the tinny note of smugness in the Sergeant’s monotone, Kell sheathed his blade. ‘How fare the Guard and Skitarii?’ Normally, he would have called up the interlink and studied the tactical overlay himself, but his buckled helm struggled enough with simple visual display. Until it was sanctified and the machine-spirit appeased, he would not risk the wargear.

Maun shuddered, silent for several seconds as his onboard cogitator collated theatre-scale data. ‘Little resistance,’ he replied. ‘Dead ends. The mountain is replete with them.’

‘Not this one, though.’

‘The probability is low.’

There was a strange feeling below Kell’s stomach as he looked up at the vast blackstone arch that had been sheltered by ingenious rock. If local shepherds had not stumbled on it by pure accident, the mythological ‘silver ghosts’ would have remained rumour and legend. If the Necron response had been more violent, more sudden, then the truth would never have reached the wider Imperium. The Space Marines would not have been summoned to purge a xenos infestation with blade and bolter.

The Judicar did not believe in coincidence. Nor did he believe, as some did, that all was according to the Omnissiah’s schema, a vast design of ineffable nature. Chance was real, as was opportunity. Success relied on making good use of both.

Rumbling ground announced the arrival of the first Rhino transports. Laden with armaments rather than reinforcements, the vehicle’s machine-spirit growled a greeting to its transhuman masters. The deployment ramp dropped. In calculus-defined order, Iron Hands began to hand out sickle magazines for bolters, fresh belts for chainswords, and common battlefield spares to patch damaged armour.

The foe was in disarray, acting foolishly. Whether shocked by the sudden brutality of the Astartes assault or wracked by deeper malady, Kell neither knew or cared. The time was now.

‘We press on, brother-sergeant. Look to your wargear.’

A grinding cough issued from the grille-faced front of Maun’s armour. It could have been a laugh - if the old veteran was even capable of such a thing. ‘Compliance.’ The Sergeant turned away to the arriving vehicles, looking for fresh ammunition.

Kell raised a hand to feel at the damage done to his helm. It had held, thankfully, but the tortured metal dug into the flesh of his face. Uncomfortable, though not painful, it did not even rank as a superficial concern. Let the enemy look upon what it had wrought, and how he endured their worst. Let his brothers see his resolve - and his disdain for the flesh’s weakness.

‘With steel, we are stronger,’ the Judicar murmured, letting Iron Father Stronos’ words rally him. ‘But without the soul we are nothing.’

The xenos would know the strength of both before this day was done.


End file.
